Thanks so much! Lots of great memories floating around on these shelves, and I can't help but smile when I enter my office every day and steal a glance in its direction. Thank you!
Thanks, Mike! Considering so much of my hunt has been based on information I first got from your site it means a lot to me that my display caught your eye.
Thanks, yeah Hayabusa Lady hasn't really been cleaning that well! I spotted a bit of dust that has seeped in from the sides of the detolfs over the last year or so.
haha, luckily I dont mind if she misses a couple of spots... she could really just relax and never clean at all for all I care...I need that toy!!!
I did have to rig a homemade sun visor (like the oldschool ones used in car windows) since moving all four detolfs into my room/office. This small apt room suffers from full on sun all day from 9am-4pm. I'm wary of it hitting toys so I taped shut a blind on the right side of the room, and made this out of record mailers for the left window. No sunlight will ever hit the shelves on my watch!: I really should get heavy duty blinds or curtains, but I hate the look of curtains and blinds never fit perfectly in windows so sunlight can seep in from the sides.
If you dont like the look of curtains and blinds all you have to do is tint your window and problem resolved
I would but I lived in a managed apartment so I'm not the owner. Although when the building next to us was robbed we installed surveillance cameras on the front and back and no one said anything!
you might be able to find the tacky sticker tint shit thats used on weirdo cars. or maybe im making that product up
I was picturing those gel squares with suction cups at the corners that I see on driver-side doors sometimes. I have no idea what size windows you've got, Chris, but it seems like with a little research you could make something like that for less than the cost of a scrappy vintage mini Or this: http://www.windowfilm.com/NEW_PAGES/cling_tint.html I like how your shelf display tapers in height from left to right. Nice touch.
I actually love sun, just not on my toys I think I'm going to stick with my ghetto visor for the moment, and then maybe work on getting better blinds. I have $10 cheap ones up now, you know the white thin ones that barely block anything? I just don't want to spend a mint getting some new ones.
I have to say within the next few days and after those Medicom Devilman reissues drop in November this will be my favorite shelf :
Is sunlight really that harmful to toys that precautions like those have to be taken to protect them? My toys are in a very well lit in a room that gets a lot of sunlight. Not direct sunlight, but tons on ambient light that fills up the room due to big windows.... could that be harmful to my toys over time?
Sunlight (UV light) can definitely be harmful to toys, and the degree depends largely on the material, coating, intensity, and quality of the vinyl. The same is also true though of interior lighting. There is no all-encompassing rule, but if you really want to protect them it is better to be safe I suppose. I don't have anything of value, nor do I get direct sun that isn't filtered out at least, and a lot of vintage stuff I had may be yellowed/brittle already, so I am not so concerned. Basically, if you want to preserve it in exactly the same condition is it forever, you need to store it in museum quality environment controlled areas - but otherwise avoiding direct, long exposure to high intensity light (e.g. sun) is probably enough.
keep in mind that glass will absorb most uv light. i don't know which wavelengths cause damage to toys, so maybe the uva that gets through can do something to them in the long run, but just having them behind glass should keep them reasonably safe. if it's not behind glass and indoors, the biggest source of uv would be fluorescent lighting.
Overall I don't think a room that is well lit via sunlight will be that harmful to your toys, as long as they aren't directly in the beams. THAT said, direct (i.e. sunbeams) sunlight hitting your toys is definitely not good. Direct sunlight can bleach and lighten the paint jobs on your toys over time. Think of it as leaving a shirt hanging outside on a clothesline for a few weeks, or for example in my room, I have DVD cases that are close to the window. Direct sun has definitely lightened and bleached out some of the bindings on them.
Ah cool. Thanks for the info guys. No glass on my shelves, but none of them are in any direct beams of light either. So that's reassuring. But this morning I was getting paranoid after I read this thread.... I have a holding shelf (coffee table) which is close to the window. Theres a bunch of clear toys on there, and any slightest bit of yellowing I'm attributing because they sat so close to an open light source.... Even though I keep trying to convince myself that they were already like that when I received them